In an auditory oddball task, negatively (disgust) and positively (laughter) valenced sounds were
presented as rare targets. To disentangle acoustic effects from emotional ones, a control oddball
was conceived with a non‐emotional scrambled version of the original target sounds as rare
targets. Results from the emotional oddball that differed from the control oddball showed an
inverse effect of valence in the P2 and P300 range, with negative valence having higher mean
amplitude values in the 130‐270ms range, but lower values in the 290‐460 range when compared
to ERPs elicited by positive and neutral valence. The P2 results are interpreted as early
mobilization of attentional resources towards potentially threatening stimuli, while the P300
results could reflect less detailed evaluation of such stimuli.